Amy Adams laughs and cries in Santa Barbara

Vanguard Award presented to Amy Adams at Santa Barbara

Chuck Kirman/The Star
Actress Amy Adams arrives on the red carpet of the Arlington Theatre at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday night. She received the Cinema Vanguard Award, given to someone who’s taken artistic risks and made unique contributions to film. The four-time Oscar nominee is up again this year for her turn in “The Master.”

Ventura County Star

Chuck Kirman/The Star
Actress Amy Adams, on stage at the Arlington Theatre at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Thursday night, received the Cinema Vanguard Award, given to someone who’s taken artistic risks and made unique contributions to film. The four-time Oscar nominee is up again this year for her turn in “The Master.”
01/31/2013 Santa Barbara, CA

Ventura County Star

Chuck Kirman/The Star
Actress Amy Adams, on stage at the Arlington Theatre at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, received the Cinema Vanguard Award, given to someone who’s taken artistic risks and made unique contributions to film. The four-time Oscar nominee id up again this year for her turn in “The Master”.
01/31/2013 Santa Barbara, CA

Ventura County Star

Chuck Kirman/The Star
The marquee illuminates the Arlington Theatre at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Ventura County Star

Ever the versatile chameleon, actress Amy Adams slinked into the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in a white-and-black polka dot dress on Thursday night and demonstrated in her understated way why people find her so appealing.

She was funny, often poking the sword at herself and her foibles, but also serious when discussing her craft. She laughed and she cried. She spoke openly about fear of failure.

Adams is a four-time Oscar nominee, including for her latest film “The Master,” just one reason why the festival honored her with the Cinema Vanguard Award at the Arlington Theatre.

On the red carpet, Adams told The Star she was attracted to the role because of director Paul Thomas Anderson, who topped a list she once made of people she’d most like to work with. The film concerns people caught up in a 1950s-era religious cult.

“Any time I get to play a role that challenges me, I’m up for it,” Adams said on the carpet. “I’ve never shied away from a challenge.”

Adams next will take on two icons, one imaginary and the other real. She’s Lois Lane in “Man of Steel,” the latest in the Superman franchise due out in June. She’s also in preproduction on a film about the famed 1960s-era singer Janis Joplin.

Of the latter, Adams said she’s busy doing research “to find the person behind the icon.”

Adams has shuttled easily between art-house films such as “The Master” and “Junebug,” for which she got her first Oscar nod, and more mainstream fare such as “The Muppets,” “Trouble With the Curve” and the Disney film “Enchanted.”

Or as film critic and columnist Pete Hammond, the evening’s moderator, put it, “She can clearly do it all — comedy, drama, musicals, singing with Muppets. She can be tough, tender, heartbreaking and commanding.”

The night hit an emotional nerve when Adams talked about a “Junebug” character coping with the death of a child.

Adams started crying as she said, “So many women have come up to me and told me they lost a child. Now having had a child, I can’t imagine that pain.”

Adams, 38, also was Oscar-nominated for her turns in “The Fighter” and “Doubt.” An early breakthrough was 2002’s “Catch Me If You Can,” in which she had a sex scene with Leonardo DiCaprio.

Teased Adams: “I had pigtails. Who wants to kiss Leonardo DiCaprio in pigtails?”

Working with such people, she said, “was never on my radar” when she moved to Los Angeles after a stint doing dinner theater in Minnesota.

She was one of seven kids growing up in Colorado, disliked high school and didn’t want to go to college. She found work as a dancer in a theater in Boulder and supported herself with menial jobs.

That included being a greeter at The Gap, where Adams joked she once scared Whitney Houston “straight into the dressing room.”

Her stint at Hooters “shocked everybody; I was naive, very naive.” Adams donned the skimpy outfit, but noted she wore less in dance class.

The difference was “in dance class, you didn’t have guys buying beer. That’s where it all goes wrong. I had guys offering me $250 to take off my shirt.” She drew even bigger roars when she paused and added, “Now, I get offered a lot more.”

Anderson, director of such other films as “There Will Be Blood,” “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia,” presented Adams with her award, given to actors who take risks.

“We’re all very happy when she shows up on the big screen,” he said. “There’s no expiration date with Amy Adams because she will never run out of talent.”

Adams said she’s “a fearful person” professionally, and thanked Anderson and fellow stars for helping her through that.